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Poets are sensitive, ethereal creatures, ineffectual dreamers obsessed with metaphors and finding the right rhythms and rhymes. They're generally harmless, right? Not always. On this list, there are killers, crooks, plotters, rakes, a blackmailer, several revolutionaries, heartbreakers, duelists, drunkards, an opium fiend, a serious oddball, and even one fascist. To borrow the words of Lady Caroline Lamb, who played mistress to one of them, these men were mad, bad, and dangerous to know.
人們印象中詩人是機智敏感，超凡脫俗，癡迷修辭和韻律的夢想家。他們通常應該不會惹什么麻煩，對不對？但事實并非如此。以下列出的十位詩人簡直無惡不作，他們不是殺人放火，欺詐勒索就是決斗廝殺，策劃陰謀，他們還造反，負心，酗酒，吸食鴉片，放蕩不羈，行為古怪甚至還有一個法西斯主義者。借其中一人的情婦卡洛琳·蘭姆的話來說這真是一群瘋狂，惡劣又危險的人。
10. Fran漀椀猀 Villon
10. 弗朗索瓦·維庸
Villon by name and villain by nature, he was a murderer, thief, and an all-round low-life. He was also the finest lyric poet in France in the 15th century. Born in either 1431 or 1432, he was brought up by a professor of canon law in Paris. After leaving university in 1452, his life descended into a series of brawls, imprisonments, and exiles. His only appearances within the historical record come from prison data.
維庸可以說是干盡壞事，他不僅是小偷還是殺人犯。但也是十五世紀法國最優秀的抒情詩人。維庸1431年或1432年出生于巴黎，被一名教士收養。1452年離開大學之后，他的生活一落千丈，打架鬧事，鋃鐺入獄，多次被驅逐流放。歷史上對他的記載基本都與他入獄相關。
Villon by name and villain by nature, he was a murderer, thief, and an all-round low-life. He was also the finest lyric poet in France in the 15th century. Born in either 1431 or 1432, he was brought up by a professor of canon law in Paris. After leaving university in 1452, his life descended into a series of brawls, imprisonments, and exiles. His only appearances within the historical record come from prison data.
1455年，維庸在巴黎醉酒后，與人爭執中捅死了一名律師。他本應被逐出巴黎，卻得到了王室的赦免。1456年，他又帶領著一幫強盜從納瓦拉學院里偷了500頂金冠。因此再次遭到驅逐。1457年，他在布洛瓦服刑，1461年，在穆蘭服刑。維庸最后出現在巴黎的記錄是1462年的盜竊罪。刑滿釋放后，他又參與了一場打架，被判處死刑，后改為流放。1463年之后，他就徹底消失了。
Despite his lifestyle, Villon was a master of the intricate poetic forms of the ballade, the rondeau, and the chanson. His longer works touch on cosmology, satire, and religious symbolism. His work is rife with themes of failed love, melancholia, human suffering, lost time, and the ubiquity of death, featuring a cast of princes and prostitutes mired in Parisian brothels and drinking dens. Rimbaud revived his work in the 19th century, while Rossetti translated it into English, giving us the magnificent line “Where are the snows of yesteryear?”
雖然行徑不端，但是維庸在敘事詩，回旋詩和香頌上造詣頗高。他的長詩涉及到宇宙學，諷刺和宗教象征等方面。作品中充滿了對愛情失意，痛苦憂郁，時光逝去以及死亡不可避免的訴說，多以各種王子和妓女沉溺在妓院和酒館為主題。19世紀，蘭波重整他的作品并由羅塞蒂譯成英語，才使我們領略到了“Where are the snows of yesteryear”這樣精彩的詩句。
